Node API

renderToFile

Renders a PDF document and writes it directly to a file on the filesystem.

Signature

function renderToFile(
  element: Component,
  filePath: string,
  callbackOrProps?: ((output: string, instance: PDFInstance) => void) | Record<string, unknown>,
  props?: Record<string, unknown>
): Promise<void>

Usage

import { renderToFile } from '@vuepdf/renderer'
import MyDocument from './MyDocument.vue'

await renderToFile(MyDocument, './output.pdf', (output, instance) => {
  console.log('PDF saved to', output)
})

renderToFile is a convenience wrapper around pdf().toBuffer() + fs.writeFile.

Nuxt Server Route

Writing to disk suits generated artifacts you want to keep — nightly reports, exports a user can re-download. Note that a serverless deployment only gives you a writable temp directory, and it does not persist between invocations, so prefer renderToBuffer plus object storage there.

server/api/export.post.ts

import ExportDocument from '../../components/pdf/ExportDocument.vue'
import { renderToFile } from '@vuepdf/renderer'
import { join } from 'node:path'
import { mkdir } from 'node:fs/promises'

export default defineEventHandler(async (event) => {
  const { label } = await readBody<{ label: string }>(event)

  const dir = join(process.env.EXPORT_DIR ?? './.exports')
  await mkdir(dir, { recursive: true })

  const name = `export-${Date.now()}.pdf`
  await renderToFile(ExportDocument, join(dir, name), { label })

  return { file: name }
})

components/pdf/ExportDocument.vue

<script setup lang="ts">
import { Document, Page, Text } from '@vuepdf/renderer/components'

defineProps<{ label: string }>()
</script>

<template>
  <Document :title="label">
    <Page size="A4" :style="{ padding: 48 }">
      <Text>{{ label }}</Text>
    </Page>
  </Document>
</template>

Keep the PDF primitive imports in the document SFC. The server route can import the document component and pass props as the third argument to renderToFile. Importing a .vue document from server/ requires the @vuepdf/nuxt module — see renderToStream for why.